Contextual Performance - Overview

Overview

This construct was first identified in the industrial and organizational psychology research world by Borman & Motowidlo. Since that time, contextual performance has become an increasingly important research topic. Because of increased research efforts being focused on contextual performance, actual organizations have begun utilizing this concept by both rewarding it and incorporating it into performance appraisals. With the rise of the knowledge economy, the expectations for employees have expanded. Employees who exhibit voluntary effort and spontaneous, innovative behavior are increasingly important for organizations' competitive advantage. While the construct of contextual performance is very similar to organizational citizenship behavior (OCBs) and prosocial behavior, various Industrial/Organizational psychologists contend that contextual performance is in fact a construct in its own right.

The counterpart to contextual performance is task performance. Task performance is defined as the work activities that contribute to an organization’s technical core. Contextual performance is more likely to be voluntary in nature, whereas task performance is more likely to be prescribed by the formal job role. Despite the fact that contextual performance is more discretionary in nature, research indicates that managers include these behaviors when conducting performance evaluations. This highlights the fact that these behaviors are becoming more and more a requirement on the job. While conceptually different, these two types of performance have moderately high correlations, indicating that they share some of the same properties or those employees who are good task performers also are good contextual performers. These findings suggest that the two constructs are distinct yet related, which is important because this overlap may be influenced during performance evaluations.